A new Marin group's piecemeal approach to implementing the proposed 920-unit Larkspur Station Area Plan (Marin Voice, May 27), would not avoid the plan's many problems that rightly prompt citizens to oppose it.

The authors for Coalition for a Liveable Marin — or CALM — urge adoption of only the plan's circulation and design elements. Yet these two elements are arguably the most unrealistic parts of the plan — the circulation element asserts that the traffic impacts can be rendered "less than significant" with a few roadway and traffic-light modifications, and the design element aims to offset the effect of buildings far larger than the WinCup project.

CALM's authors advocate a seemingly-calming "fix it first" approach to today's traffic conditions, which the authors admit "should never get this bad again." They pinpoint several measures to improve traffic (such as widening Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, and adding a third lane to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge), which they rightly say should be in place before massive development. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that improved conditions from these measures would not be cancelled out by the added traffic from more units at Larkspur Landing (plus the dense multifamily housing proposed for the Bon Air shopping center parking lot by the housing element of Larkspur's General Plan).

Congestion could "get this bad again," or worse.

The plan's "demand management program to incentivize workers to make trips by carpool, vanpool, bike or transit," as CALM calls it, mostly means making parking more scare and expensive, to make auto use more difficult — essentially using "pain compliance" to achieve "behavior modification."

The "better infrastructure to encourage people to walk from place to place" that the authors propose, while desirable, will not make it any more practicable to do grocery shopping or other errands on foot or bike.

Most incredible of all is CALM's claim that, "the plan's design element will ensure no out-of-scale development will ever come to Larkspur Landing."

In fact, the plan's vague, generic guidelines were specifically intended to apply to the 300-unit monoliths that the plan envisions for the parking lots of the ferry and shopping center.

Design guidelines are inherently ineffective to offset density, for two reasons. First, good design is subjective. Second, good design cannot disguise oversized buildings any more than good tailoring can conceal obesity.

The column's claims that the "no project" alternative to the high-density plan is "simply unacceptable" because "no project means no projects" to improve traffic and parking in the area are unsubstantiated. But they do echo the unpleasant threat, implied in regional-agency plans such as Plan Bay Area, that localities that do not "densify" will be denied necessary funding to improve roads.

Larkspur and its citizens should hope that CALM does not favor this type of financial coercion as a way to "calm" opposition to densification and urbanization.

Ignored completely in CALM's article are the heavy demands that the plan's density would make on water and schools.

Also unmentioned is that one of the authors, housing advocate David Kunhardt, advocated the Corte Madera rezoning that led to the infamous WinCup project.

Understandably, this fact might make it harder for some to keep calm about his new group's latest proposals for Larkspur.

Lifelong Larkspur resident James W. Holmes served on the city's Citizens Advisory Committee that produced the Station Area Plan. He voted against adoption of the plan.